Dream Baby Dream
by Chasing Liquor
Summary: In the aftermath of a mission gone bad, McKay and Teyla struggle with the death of an innocent girl and Sheppard tries to make things right.
1. Chapter 1

**Dream Baby Dream**

A/N: Salutations. This is probably going to be a three-chapter or so story, with Rodney and Teyla ending up being the main focus, but Sheppard will have himself a sizable role as well, just as he does in the opening chapter here. Hope you enjoy, and let me know the good or the bad with a review if you'd be so kind. Thanks.

* * *

Sheppard said nice things and he really seemed to mean them. 

But some days, no sum of kind words uttered could put life in perspective, and as he watched his friend stare off into the distance, into that far-off point where everything and nothing become one single entity, the Colonel knew he wasn't equipped to wipe the blood from McKay's mind's eye.

It had been two hours since they'd put to rest the fragile body of the alien girl and twelve since she had been struck down by her knave captors. It was all so senseless. McKay had insisted he check out a vague energy reading not too far off. Sheppard had sent Teyla with him and proceeded back to the gate with Ronon, and then it had all gone wrong.

If it were for a political cause, he'd have been disgusted still, but at least it would have been something he could make sense of. There was no ideology in this instance, though. They were the lowest form of criminals, larcenists who bought and sold in flesh and blood. They'd thought McKay and Teyla valuable, ambushed them, taken them to the dirty, caliginous depths of one of the planet's immense caverns. That was sick. But what was sicker was that once there, the pair had shared the company of a small girl.

By the time Sheppard had seen her, she was dead, and he wondered suddenly what color her eyes were and what life they may have contained while her chest was still rich with breath. She hadn't looked peaceful. Even death hadn't been able to smooth away the wrinkles of pain on her face. She had suffered, and greatly. He only wished that it had been he who painted the cave wall with her butchers' brain matter.

Sheppard noted the dry blood in McKay's hair, the lacerations no one had bothered to tend to. A couple looked like they'd begun to bleed anew. If McKay noticed, though, he obviously didn't care, and that sent a chill through his friend's body. There was no complaint, no acerbity, only an empty-eyed spiritual bankruptcy that was so palpable, Sheppard could feel it eating away at his own soul.

McKay just sat there on a flat rock with a slight slouch and stared.

Ronon stalked up and looked over Sheppard's left shoulder.

"How long is he gonna be like that?"

Sheppard frowned a moment, his eyes hardening.

"He'll be there as long as he wants," he said churlishly. "How's Teyla?"

Ronon shrugged noncommittally, then sighed as he studied McKay.

"She's still standing there. I heard her talking to herself."

Sheppard took a few steps away, suddenly needing very much some distance between he and the taller man, lest he turn on impulse and punch him in the mouth. It was confounding how little tact Ronon had. He'd been benumbed by loss and isolation, surely, but it was more than mildly unsettling how little regard he seemed to have for pain that wasn't his own. Never before had Sheppared missed Ford's calm, dogged loyalty more.

The Colonel shut his eyes and gathered himself over the span of some seconds, then turned back and stepped toward Ronon.

"Look, take a walk or something. Find something to do with yourself. It's gonna be a while yet."

Ronon clenched his jaw a moment and Sheppard feared there might be words exchanged that they'd both regret, but something happened in the ragged man's eyes, some fleeting burst of humanity that lynched whatever callous reply had been brewing in the back of his throat. After a moment, Ronon nodded and walked off with a series of heavy, deliberate steps that John would have sworn made the ground quake.

McKay hadn't moved.

Sheppard walked over to join him, his gait not at all like that of their companion, deliberate and gentle, as if a gesture of affection for the soil, and as he drew nearer, his steps grew slower and slower. He didn't want to startle him.

McKay heard his quiet steps and saw the blur out of the corner of his eye. It was only just now that it occurred to him how long he'd been there. The sun, which had once bloodied the sky with a spastic enthusiasm, had dropped now out of sight and left in its stead an endless black void that made the astrophysicist feel as if he were looking inside himself. There wasn't anything that could bring the sky back to life, not until morning, and morning was so far away.

He thought about the girl's eyes, pictured them in his head, so full of life, so stubborn and defiant, brimming with a vitality he'd never seen every last second until she choked on her final breath. No one should die that young. No one should die that violently. No one should, but especially not her. He couldn't recall the specifics with as much clarity as he expected just now -- he supposed that was a side effect of the concussion he knew he had -- but he realized that the culpability resided with him.

They killed her because of one unwise moment, _his_ unwise moment. In one brief, blindingly idiotic and uncharacteristic instant, McKay had lashed out with his fist as their abductors had with crude verbiage bantered about the prospect of satisfying their carnal desires with Teyla against her will. They'd beaten him for that, kicked him again and again while Teyla was left helplessly to watch. But that hadn't proven their point well enough for their liking. Without reserve, they'd taken the girl by the hair and dragged her out into McKay's line of sight, and shot her in the chest.

"Hey, McKay," Sheppard said softly, placing a tentative hand on his friend's shoulder. "How ya doin'?"

McKay turned away. If he didn't look at him, maybe the scattered, fugacious wishes for his own death would stay inside him where they belonged. Maybe if he had enough time to himself, he could find a way to pretend that none of this happened. He wished Ronon were here to look at him with pity or contempt or some yet unknown confection of both. Sheppard's eyes were so spiritually philanthropic that McKay feared he might absolve himself if he looked inside them.

"I'm fine."

Sheppard took a moment, unsure of how to proceed. He could see McKay's labored breathing now that he was up close, and he wondered if McKay had sustained more injuries than he'd let on or if it was merely a product of the day's events, which had made the air around the doctor thick with ether and blood and all else that overtaxed a human lung. After studying him a while and drawing no nearer to an answer, Sheppard smiled sadly and nudged his shoulder.

"Move over."

McKay didn't look at him, but he compiled, shifting over several inches so that the Colonel could sit down beside him. He might have protested, but the less he said, the better. As much as he hated himself, he knew that deep down in that place a man can't control, that compartment of self-preservation, he wanted someone to take his guilt away and bury it where he'd never find it. He knew that if he looked in Sheppard's eyes, his friend would do just that.

Sheppard leaned back, bracing himself against the rock with a flat hand.

"Rodney, there was nothing more you could have done."

McKay angled his body away, hunching forward, elbows against his knees, and brought a hand up to his head. He tried combing it through his hair, but the sharp, stinging pain that came with the discovery of a fresh laceration made him think better of it. Sheppard's words hung in the air. They weren't true, but they were nice, and McKay knew that he meant them.

The doctor felt tears in his treacherous eyes.

"She was so fucking beautiful."

Sheppard sat up straight and lifted his hand off the rock, bringing it to McKay's back. When his friend didn't continue, he began to rub it in smooth circles. He could tell the gesture was comforting, so he kept on with it for the myriad minutes that passed in silence. There wasn't much more he could offer. Even if he could convince McKay of the truth, that he was owed no guilt in this, it wouldn't dig that girl out of the ground.

It startled him when McKay spoke again.

"I thought when I killed them, it might make me feel better," he said. "But all it left me with was the awful truth. Men were on this world and breathing, and I sent them away."

Sheppard wasn't prepared for that, nor was he prepared when McKay turned his head and met his eyes.

Nothing happened. Nothing changed. It didn't do a God damn thing.


	2. Chapter 2

A/N: Thank you all very much for your kind words and taking the time to read and review. It's nice to actually know you're being read on here, which isn't always the case. So, I appreciate it.

Ya know, the way I had this planned out, there were more chapters to come, but I'm not sure if it should end here or not. I mean, this sort of feels like an ending. You guys can tell me what you think.

Okay, hope you enjoy this and thanks again.

* * *

Teyla could feel the wind pick up just a bit and it was only now that she recalled the team's discussion about the planet's erratic climate, which shifted wildly from temperate conditions in the day to extreme cold in the prime of the evening. It was remarkable that any vegetation could flourish. In fact, it had so impressed McKay that he'd expounded for nearly half an hour on the potential for scientific discovery. But the glib scientist's attention was nearly as erratic as the climate and, after spotting in his scans some unknown energy source, his focus had shifted entirely. 

She could tell that Sheppard was none too fond of McKay's demand for extra time by the roll of his eyes and good-natured sigh of exasperation, but he had relented and, seeing in Teyla's eyes a willingness to indulge their friend, he'd sent her along to look out for him. McKay had a way of forgetting there was any matter in the universe beyond that in his brain and whatever it was pondering.

And then it happened. She should have been paying closer attention. It wasn't as if McKay's propensity for single-mindedness was a surprise. Her function was to pay enough mind to their surroundings for the both of him while he investigated his curious reading. In that regard, she had failed him, and it had nearly killed them both. She wasn't sure she could have helped it, though. There was something about her friend's perpetual anxiety and thirst to make common the unknown that she found pleasant and comforting, and so on many occasions, she found her eyes straying to him and found her ears filtering out any noise that sought dominion over his needlessly frantic musings.

Teyla wished now that she'd put up more of a fight than she did. By the time she'd found her wits, they'd been rendered strategically impotent, and for both their sakes, she'd laid down her weapon and surrendered their fates to the devil. She couldn't help but wonder what might have happened if she'd been more impulsive, aggressive. Maybe she could have ended their nightmare before it started.

Another voice, though, a kinder one, imbued her with some small measure of comfort: it was much more likely that any resistance would have gotten the both of them killed then and there. That thought brought with it a tremor and her body shook in time with the wind.

Even standing beside the makeshift grave couldn't bring into focus the reality of what had happened. The girl had never even told them her name. She was so scared and fragile and helpless, and yet in her eyes burned the dream of some great purpose, whose secrets were known to none but her, fermented inside her mother and crystallized in its ninth month with the miracle of birth.

And now the dream was dead.

"Teyla."

It was a single word, her name, but she'd read books a thousand pages long that had less subtext. It spoke of shared pain and regret, of the sinister vapidity she knew ached in both their guts. It was a sonnet and a memoir and a formal letter, a plea and a command and a neutral suggestion, a gift and a theft andthe return of something borrowed. It was life and death and the precarious wire they walked between them.

She wiped at her eyes, then turned and looked at McKay.

As she looked into his optics, dead weight on a face marred by small cuts and dark bruises, she wished suddenly that he were ranting and raving about the prospect that one such cut might leave a scar or about just how grave his general ailment was, and she wished she could share a knowing smile with Sheppard and Ford that the Canadian had missed his true calling acting to the back row of a theater. He looked so totally broken.

Teyla sought a smile, but it slipped off into the wind.

"Dr. McKay."

He took a tentative step forward, his eyes surveying every inch of the cooling landscape except the spot she'd claimed as hers. She watched him curiously, replacing for one instant the heft of all that had happened with her genuine fascination at the way he moved and spoke. To speculate about what he was thinking and how it might manifest itself was more a career than a hobby.

The cogitation evaporated when she saw his hand shake, watched him grasp his bloody-knuckled fist with his other hand, which itself shook. It made her wonder if he'd broken a bone the way he was grimacing. There had been plenty of time for the adrenaline to where off now, and just as her fatigue was setting in, it was likely the pain of McKay's beating was finally effecting him on a conscious level.

"How are you doing?" he asked, meeting her eyes for a half-second before looking back into the darkness. "I mean, I - I - know - you're - that, I'm sorry, that was... that was..."

He looked at her again.

"That was an awful stupid question, wasn't it? I should have known that, but instead, I asked anyways. You know, for a genius, I'm extremely unintelligent on a number of levels, and really, as a scientist, I should seek out those things with which I'm not intimately familiar and rectify that because if I have a greater understanding of the nuances of existence itself, then I'll be able to better understand and interact with my surroundings and thus, really, I'd make the universe a better place by being more productive than I already am and..."

McKay took a pitiful breath and looked at the ground.

"I'm sorry."

Teyla smiled, a deeply melancholic, but genuine smile. She closed the gap between them with tiny, unassuming steps, and then placed her hand on his shoulder, drawing his eyes up away from his shoes and onto hers again. McKay nearly whimpered when he saw the mutual care and hurt in her soft gaze. He wished he could die in that moment because there wasn't a better one waiting, not one in the next million years. She was so beautiful and so tortured and so earnestly kind.

"It is all right, Dr. McKay."

Her voice was so soothing, he almost thought it was the truth.

They just stared at each other after that, seconds turning into minutes until they'd lost all track of time. There was nothing uncomfortable about it, no insistence or demands. It was just an interim union, two rescued sea-goers still clinging to the same life-vest because they'd forgotten how else to live. No one could save them but each other.

He looked away again when he finally spoke.

"I'm awful sorry," he said with a child's voice. "I messed up. I messed up big. And I'm sorry. I'm so God damn sorry."

Teyla felt the tears rolling back now. She felt his body quake beneath her palm, felt the quiver travel off his shoulder and up her own arm to her own shoulder, where it filtered down through her chest and filled the emptiness there.

"You were very brave."

He didn't know why it surprised him to hear her say that. She was the most gracious and benevolent and forgiving person he'd ever known, but he'd been certain that even she wouldn't be able to overlook his colossal transgression. Somehow, though, even in this dark hour, she stole from the collective unconscious some scrap of unnatural charity.

McKay lifted his head again and for the first time that day, neither he nor Teyla made any effort to conceal their tears or what hid behind them. There was between them shared a tender acceptance of what had been and the mutual promise that whatever would be, it would be borne by the both of them and not alone.

He lifted a tentative hand to her face after a few moments and stroked her cheek with his unsteady thumb, wiping as best he could at the wet trails leading down. Teyla closed her eyes and leaned into his hand, wrapping her arms around herself to try and quell her trembling, but it was to little avail. She could feel every spasm of McKay's body as well and that fact comforted her in a way nothing else ever had.

Seconds turned again into minutes and the night grew colder, so cold that frost bite wasn't terribly far off now. She knew they should leave, but she didn't want to. This moment would never come again, this crossroad of agony and mercy, and though it was likely they'd have the chance to return later, she could conceive of no adequate way to leave the young girl to her eternal rest.

McKay's hand slid down to her neck, where he continued his soft, inept strokes with his thumb.

"We should go," he quavered. "She-Sheppard will be coming in a second. Or wor-wor-worse, Ronon."

Teyla smiled at that and managed a soft chuckle through her tears. She opened her eyes at last and craned her head to look back at the lacking grave.

"It doesn't seem right. It seems like there should be more."

McKay seemed to know what she meant. He dropped his hand from her neck, letting in dangle as he considered his reply, then wrapped his arms around himself in much the same way as Teyla had to preserve what little body heat was left unravaged by the evening. She watched him curiously.

"At my mother's funeral, they sang a-a-a song about her."

She nodded.

"This is common among your people?"

"Some," he said. "The-there's a lot of different customs, but a lot of people d-do that."

Teyla had known him long enough to know when he was deepest in thought. It wasn't usually in the midst of a conversation. It was something he'd work out on his own, perfect before he dared to speak it. Here and now, he was improvising, and she resolved to make sure he knew that he wasn't as bad at it as he thought.

"Do you know a so-song?" she asked, shuddering violently as the wind picked up.

McKay nodded after a moment and his eyes came back into focus. He hesitated, though, before speaking again.

"I'm not such a good singer. I tried voice lessons, b-b-b-but they told me it was hopeless."

Teyla smiled reassuringly.

"Nothing is hopeless, Rodney."

She'd hoped with her remark to ease his self-consciousness, but she was surprised to see just how much it effected him. It was apparent he was scarcely acquainted with words of comfort, the unfettered gratitude in his eyes all at once both wonderful and saddening, for he had clearly lived most of his years without the subtle niceties most people took for granted.

McKay reached out suddenly and enveloped her in an unyielding embrace. She happily settled into it and felt a little of her lost warmth return to her. Once they'd gotten used to it, she heard his voice again, this time right next to her ear, and she listened carefully as he sang, his voice much steadier than in the moments previous.

"Dream baby, dream.

Dream baby, dream.

Keep on dreamin'.

Come on and dream, b-baby, dream.

Come on, darlin', you gotta dream, baby, dream.

K-keep the light burnin'.

Come on, keep the fire burnin'.

Open up your heart.

Come on, open up your heart.

Dream, baby, dream.

C-come on, yeah, keep on dreamin'.

Keep on dreamin'.

I wanna see your smile.

I j-j-just wanna see you smile.

I wanna see your smile.

I just wanna see you smile.

Baby, dry your eyes.

Come on and dr-dream baby, dream.

I wanna see your smile.

I just wanna see you smile.

I wanna see you smile.

I just wanna see you smile.

Yeah, I'm gonna see you smile.

Come on, baby. Dream, baby, dream."

Teyla hugged him tighter and McKay thoughtlessly kissed her head. He'd only ever done that to one person before. It had been earlier that day when he'd given up chest compressions on the little girl. He liked how it felt to do it to someone it mattered to. She liked how it felt too, so they didn't move, just stood there locked in defiance to the evening. It got colder and colder, but they didn't move. Sheppard didn't come at first. He just let them be, and they didn't move. It was such a beautiful thing.


End file.
